17th century jacket - Millennyum

The only thing that was still lacking from my 17th century outfit was a jacket. Time to make the final piece!

There’s a type of jacket that appears to have been very common in that era, which you can see on this fragment of a painting:

Fragment of ‘Boerenkermis’, David Teniers, ca. 1665

The jacket has these little ‘wings’ at the shoulders, and at the bottom, triangular gussets have been set in to create more width. The sleeves have splits and consist of two parts, so they can be shaped at the elbow (which you also see in Victorian outfits). The side seam is interesting as well, because it doesn’t run straight upwards towards the armpit, but swerves backwards, and ends at the back, halfway the sleeve.

All this I saw in a pattern book that I lent from a fellow re-enactor. However, it was a crude drawing and I didn’t have an actual pattern that would fit me yet. So I drafted one and first made a mockup from linen.

The mockup had several issues, which I corrected before making the actual garment. But I’m still not very satisfied with the end result.

17th century jacket - triptych — Actually, you are supposed to wear the apron over the jacket.

The waist is still too low, even though I lifted it after noticing the problem in the mockup. The sleeves are a bit too long and the jacket is also too wide in general – I thought I would need some extra space because of all the layers I am wearing underneath it, but I could have done with a tighter one. So the whole thing looks a bit frumpy.

It looks much better when I put the jacket on my mannequin – which is weird, because the thing is supposed to be the same size as I am. On these photo’s, you can see more details as well. I am happy with how the side seam, sleeve seam, and ‘wing’ come together at the exact same spot!